“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.” – Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” – Henry Ford (1863-1947)

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” – Warren Zevon (1947-2003)

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

“When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

“The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.” – Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

“Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.” – Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it” – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“While we are postponing, life speeds by.” – Seneca (3BC – 65AD)

“Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?” – Bumper Sticker

“God, please save me from your followers!” – Bumper Sticker

“Fill what’s empty, empty what’s full, and scratch where it itches.” – the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

“Luck is the residue of design.” – Branch Rickey – former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” – Mel Brooks

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” – Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

“Wit is educated insolence.” – Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

“My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

“Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.” – Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

“Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.” – Guy Davenport

“When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” – Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

“We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?” – Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

“When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” – Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.” – Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

“I would have made a good Pope.” – Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

“In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.” – W.B. Prescott

“Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.” – John von Neumann (1903-1957)

“The mistakes are all waiting to be made.” – chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game’s opening position

“It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.” – Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

“Grove giveth and Gates taketh away.” – Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands

“There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.” – C. A. R. Hoare

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“What do you take me for, an idiot?” – General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

“I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.” – Bill Hirst

“Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” – Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

“A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.” – Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

“It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.” – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.” – Karl Wallenda

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” – Sun Tzu

“A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.” – Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

” The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” – Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

“Hell is paved with good samaritans.” – William M. Holden

“The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.” – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“Silence is argument carried out by other means.” – Ernesto”Che”Guevara (1928-1967)

“Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

“The average person thinks he isn’t.” – Father Larry Lorenzoni

“Heav’n hath no rage like love to hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.” – William Congreve (1670-1729)

“A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.” – Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.” – Lewis Perelman

“Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency.” – Lewis Perelman

“Sometimes it is not enough to do our best; we must do what is required.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal.” – Sigfried Hulzer

“Ask her to wait a moment – I am almost done.” – Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is dying

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

“I think it would be a good idea.” – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

“I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat!” – Will Rogers (1879-1935)

“If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” – Will Rogers (1879-1935)

“Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity.” – Irving Kristol

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” – A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.” – Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live

“We’re going to turn this team around 360 degrees.” – Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks

“Half this game is ninety percent mental.” – Yogi Berra

“There is only one nature – the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole.” – Bill Wulf

“There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” – Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“We are not retreating – we are advancing in another Direction.” – General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

“If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?” – Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing

“#3 pencils and quadrille pads.” – Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the grid lines were not so dominant.

“Interesting – I use a Mac to help me design the next Cray.” – Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when he was told that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.

“Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis.” – Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

“I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.” – Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“The truth is more important than the facts.” – Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)